


A Thousand Years

by annabeth



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Fantasy AU, Historical AU, M/M, a smidge of smut, character death (but Yuri is reincarnated), immortal!Otabek, otayuri - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-30 21:19:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12661629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annabeth/pseuds/annabeth
Summary: The deaths are always the hardest. No matter how many ages pass, Otabek never gets used to watching his beautiful boy wither, age, and die.





	A Thousand Years

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [Blownwish](http://archiveofourown.org/users/blownwish) for looking this over!
> 
> Title is from "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri. Inspiration came from the song "Forever May Not Be Long Enough" by Live.

**Constantinople, 1347**

Today, it's harder than most days to watch Yuri die, because Yuri is still young; only a teenager. Just a child, really; but his lungs fill up with fluid and Otabek curses himself for not finding him sooner. This lifetime, he's had only a handful of days with the great—and eternal—love of his life.

Otabek will never die. He will never age. He will never pass beyond this realm into one beyond human imagining. He's tried asking, but Yuri never remembers what it's like on the other side of the veil. He does remember Otabek. All it takes is a touch, and the blond boy who looks more immortal than Otabek does, will remember his love.

"Beka," whispers Yuri through a wracking cough. Blood spatters his chin. "I'm cold."

Of course he is. He's ill; bruised shadows on the pale skin beneath his eyes, and pustules that rupture at the slightest breath. He's suffering from chills from the fever, and Otabek has, in his search for Yuri, watched half of Europe succumb to the Black Death. To find Yuri, to twine their fingers together, to love him for mere moments before he, too, fell beneath the heavy mantle of certain death is the worst sort of torture. Otabek had hoped he would be in time—that there would never be any illness for his Yura, that Yuri would live a long time yet, with him.

Instead he's a thirteen-year-old boy with flaxen hair and green eyes that are glassy with an almost fugue state, even as he reaches again for Otabek's hand. Fuck it, Otabek thinks. He can't catch it; he can't die.

Mindless of the contagion and heedless of the pus-filled sores on Yura's skin, Otabek gathers him to his chest. In his last moments, he rocks them both together, singing lowly, a soft lullaby that he knows will burrow into Yuri's heart.

A lifetime from now, when his Yura is again on this earth, when he finds him again, this is a song that will remind him of this life, of the love that didn't care about gangrenous fingers or thin, brittle wrists. And it will become part of their collective history, a song that Yura, having heard it once, will never forget.

Years from now, if he hears it anywhere at anytime, without Otabek near, he'll stop, cock his head in that way he has, and remember. He won't understand why; not then. He'll just imagine it's deja vu and continue on with his life as he has in every other lifetime.

"Yura," Otabek murmurs as he stops singing. There's no point. His Yura's gone; just another empty shell, a breathless husk that Otabek will bury, and he'll leave wild violets at the grave. But he will never come back to it. Yura won't be there, not anymore. Not unlike the way he's no longer with Otabek in Otabek's arms.

"I love you," Otabek says. He lays the wasted, disease-ridden body back on the mattress. He gets up. He strikes flint to tinder and watches the little cottage where he used to live burn. He doesn't want to spread the contagion; he bathes himself in the creek even as the flames shoot up into the air and dance a ghoulish jig in the nighttime sky, blotting out the stars.

Losing Yura has blotted out his heart, once again.

"Oh, Yura. Why did you have to be so young when I found you? When I lost you?"

There are no answers, only stillness in his brain. He dries himself in the light of the fire and then lifts his pack. In approximately thirteen to fifteen years, Otabek will feel that little flame start up again in his heart, and he will begin his search until he finds the boy that a baby, just now being born, has grown into.

His Yura.

++

**Thebes, Egypt, 1480 B.C.**

Yuri is fifteen years old and absolutely the most beautiful thing Otabek's ever seen. Here, in Egypt, they have other names, but in his heart Otabek has always been Otabek and his Yura has always been Yuri. He doesn't understand it; he can't explain it. It's just the way it is.

In the hot, desert sun, Yuri's hair gleams with a shine like gold being buried with the pharaohs. The piercing quality of his eyes undresses Otabek from his clothes down to his soul, but he doesn't mind it. He holds open his arms and Yuri runs into them, tackling him and throwing them both to the ground. The golden circlets on his wrists and the gilded gold jewellery on his body doesn't add to his beauty—his beauty makes the jewellery seem dull, outshone. Yuri is nominally royalty, but Otabek is a slave. Still, he belongs to Yuri—in every possible way—and so Yuri's mother turns a blind eye to the games her son plays.

Yuri's kisses are still untutored, awkward, but Otabek doesn't mind. He lets Yuri nip at his lips, too hard; he licks the blood away with a kittenish tongue.

"Beka, Beka!" he cries, a little later when Otabek has worked him open on his cock. When his creamy milk thighs are spread and Otabek's darker, more golden skin is between them almost like a bruise. But this is _theirs_ , and they will be forever. Otabek knows that.

"Yura, do you like it?" he asks in a low, scratchy voice. His mouth is as dry as the desert air around him. The sand beneath Yuri's perfect body is going to start to burn his skin soon, so Otabek picks him up and flips them over; watches Yuri ride him, one hand tousling his own blond hair, green eyes closed. "Look at me."

Those limpid green eyes flutter open and focus on Otabek.

"I love you," he says. "I will love you forever."

"Forever won't be long enough," replies Yuri, solemnly, even as he bucks on top of Otabek and comes. Otabek receives the splatter of white fluid as if it's manna and reaches up, entwines their fingers together.

Yura doesn't know that he's both wrong, and right. Forever _won't_ be long enough. But for Yura, forever will be doled out in short spurts, with Otabek consigned to waiting for him. For Otabek, forever is a road with a signpost every fifteen years, and never any end. 

**1460 B.C.**

"Rest easy for me," Otabek murmurs, touching the cool forehead. "Remember me."

Yuri tries to speak, but the end is flying on swift feet towards him. His lips part, but only breath escapes, once, twice, thrice. Then he's silent, silenced.

"Goodnight," Otabek says, and kisses the blue-veined eyelids. Yura never gets enough time. Otabek never gets enough time.

++

**London, 1843**

In the heart of Victorian London, Yuri Plisetsky is a lord, the firstborn son of an earl. Otabek is a stablehand. It doesn't matter; their love affair will light up the iniquities of the time—starting from the moment Yuri gets caught mouthing Otabek's dick through his serviceable woolen pants in a gambling hell called a _casino_. 

It should be nothing; it _is_ nothing, really, but Yuri's contemporary and sometime "friend" Michele Crispino, an Italian on loan from the Continent—as he likes to jest—sees them together. He sees the way Yuri's head tilts as he tries to fit Otabek's cock in his mouth before even undoing his laces.

Otabek watches the moue of disgust, the curl of that aristocratic lip. He wants to gently pull Yuri away, so that the scene doesn't get any worse. He wants to touch Yuri's face and whisper _I'm sorry_. He wants to challenge Michele that he has an unhealthy _tendre_ for his own sister, the lovely Sara.

He does none of these things, mostly because it happens too fast. One second he feels the pressure of Yuri's mouth on him, the next Michele is hauling Yuri off, and away, and rearing back for a brutal punch—but Otabek sees it coming, even if Yuri doesn't. He throws himself in the path of that fist and suffers the impact of it against his jaw, the side of his face. It's his job, isn't it, to take the hits meant for Yuri?

"Bloody hell, Yuri," Michele hisses. "You some kind of _sodomite_?"

"Thought you were my friend," Yuri says, wiping at a trickle of blood at the corner of Otabek's lips. He bats his long, golden eyelashes and turns the full force of those stunning green eyes on Michele. "You sure you don't want some?"

Otabek would be jealous if he didn't know—hasn't known for millennia—that Yuri is his, and will always be his. It's written into their stars, their futures, their _everything_.

"I'm taking you to your father," Michele threatens, and Yuri smiles, unafraid.

"I could tell stories about your sister Sara that would make _your_ father's hair curl," Yuri says, drawing out the words and effectively silencing Michele. It's an ill-fitting solution, however; in three years, Yuri will be caught by his own father in the stables, bare from the waist down, with Otabek's fingers plunging into him.

Otabek has never felt so impotent, then. The Buggery Act of 1533 makes their "immoral act" punishable by hanging, and while Otabek will escape the noose—barely, because of cowardly plans he has to put in place to keep his secrets—he has to watch Yuri mount those steps. Watch as his slender, gorgeous neck is fitted with rope that is hugged tight to places where Otabek's lips used to worship. His golden hair is matted to the point it no longer shines, and his hands and feet are filthy. He must be crawling with vermin.

Otabek has still never seen anything so beautiful.

++

**Salem, Massachusetts, June 1692**

Since the beginning of time, Otabek has known that Yuri possesses an unearthly beauty. He has been enthralled by the green eyes; bewitched by the golden hair; enchanted by the tip-tilted nose; and enraptured by the rapture in his lean, lithe young body.

He has kissed every inch a thousand times plus a thousand times and a thousand times more. He has revered that body; tasted those lips; held the warm weight of his head cradled in his hands. He has fucked that sweet, tender body open; he has felt the slight weight of Yuri's body pinning him down when he's pushed into Otabek.

He has watched those eyes flicker with the last vestiges of life. He has seen the lights go out in those green eyes. He has kissed that forehead in benediction; he has wrapped that body in linens for burial. He has known his Yura in every single way it's possible to know another person.

But sometimes fate is cruel. In 1692, on a warm June afternoon, Otabek finds his Yura for the first time all over again. Yuri is standing beneath a pear tree, dappled with sunlight and eating one of the pears. The juice is running down his chin and arm, and Otabek steps into the clearing with him. Yuri looks up, all curiosity, his cheeks dusted with peach from a bloom of health.

_This time_ , Otabek thinks, _he's not sick, or dying_. Sometimes that's all they get; those last moments before Yura is gone. But here, he looks happy, solid, so real Otabek's heart clenches. By his reckoning, his Yura is fifteen again. He generally is, though occasionally Otabek manages to eke out a little extra time with him by finding him a year or two earlier.

"Good morrow!" Yuri calls, gifting him with a smile. Oh, to be a droplet of that pear juice as it clings to his lower lip, catching the sunlight! Otabek may have plundered and teased and gentled those lips a thousand, thousand times, but he shall never tire of it. How can he?

"May I—" Otabek strides up to him. "Please," he says. "Take my hand?"

And Yura does, his beautiful, trusting boy. His eyes widen.

"Beka!" is all the warning he gets before the warm wonderful weight of him barrels into Otabek and knocks them both to the grass. But Otabek should have known. This glorious creature is too bewitching to pass unnoticed.

This first hanging is excruciating. Otabek wants to hold those hands as they go limp in death; he wants to stand beneath and catch those feet before his neck can break; he wants so badly to _stop it_ , but there's no stopping it. Yuri has been branded a witch; tried and found guilty in a mockery of justice. Otabek knows that Yuri is no witch—the terrible irony is that if anyone knew the truth about Otabek, _he_ would be considered the witch.

Otabek doesn't know why he can't die. He doesn't have any understanding about their tangled situation beyond the fact that Yuri is the mate to his soul, his jagged edges fitting perfectly to Yuri's until they form a definitive whole.

No, Otabek doesn't have the truth behind his own existence, except that it's up to him to take care of Yuri.

Yuri's neck doesn't break. Otabek can only watch, in furious, impotent silence as he slowly strangles, body twitching. Otabek's hands are claws opening and closing. He knows his Yura has to die, every single time. But that doesn't make it any easier; it doesn't salve his own conscience for always watching but never being able to keep it from happening.

Under cover of night, he retrieves Yuri's body. He gently wraps him in cloth, then buries him beneath the pear tree where they first met in this lifetime. It makes him both bitter and beautiful, the soft rain of dirt where it falls on Yuri. Otabek wants to _change_ things. He wants to be the one down there, in the earth. He wants to hold Yuri in his arms for eternity, even if he's not conscious of it. He doesn't want to wander the continents searching for Yuri every thirteen-to-fifteen years.

"Rest well," he whispers, and places pear blossoms over the mound of dirt. Then he gets to his feet; it's time to go.

It's both always time to go, and never _his_ time to go.

++

**Rome, 64 A.D.**

Otabek is supposed to be Yuri's protector. At least, with his limited knowledge of what he is, he feels as if this is his role in life, the reason why he is given the priceless gift of Yura's life and love every fifteen years. And it is so priceless, like being crowned a king over and over.

Yuri is the king, in truth; Otabek knows this. He's only a knight errant, a man whose sole purpose is to love his Yura and try to keep him safe.

There is a locked chest of intolerable pain inside of Otabek's heart. Every time he fails Yuri, every time he loses Yuri, he adds another layer of anguish and then turns the key. It is the only way he has not to give in to despair.

He thinks someday it will be too much, this agony he carries over Yuri, but he still wouldn't change anything. He's been given a great gift: the love of someone incomparable. He thinks he could have been given this endless, eternal life, but been doomed to spend it alone.

Now, Otabek wraps an arm around Yuri's shoulder as they stand around with the rest of the guests. Here, in Rome, to protect Yuri with his waif-like beauty, Otabek has claimed that Yuri is his "dainty boy," a child-slave for the purposes of sexual gratification.

It's true that Yuri is both sexual and gratifying, but neither of those things are what draws Otabek to him, though he tilts Yuri's face as they wait and kisses him lovingly. And then a roar rises up, a cheer of epic proportions, and Emperor Nero enters.

His spouse-to-be, the freedman Pythagoras, is dressed finely, but for all of his finery, Nero is outshining him in the Roman bridal veil.

"Nero is the bride?" Yuri asks Otabek in an undertone. "We could marry, you know." He nestles closer to Otabek.

"We're of differing social classes," Otabek reminds him. In this place, Otabek is the one with all the power, and Yuri is the slave. It's an uncomfortable reversal; Otabek would rather Yuri be the emperor, the prince, the pharaoh.

It doesn't really matter, he supposes, as he pulls Yuri closer; Yuri is the emperor of his heart, after all.

**64 AD**

Otabek can't stop him—he can't hold onto Yuri any longer, as he's ripped from Otabek's arms. Screaming,

"He's not a Christian!" does no good; Nero's men yank on Yuri's arm until Otabek has to let go or let Yuri's arm be torn from its socket. He runs after them—he's failed Yuri, again!—and he tries over and over to beat back the emperor's men, to reclaim his _puer delicatus_ and perhaps flee, to save his life; against the backdrop of flames that singe his hair and scald his throat, Otabek is helpless.

In this lifetime, the fifteen-year-old Yuri will be lost to him after only a year; tossed onto a funeral pyre that is all of Rome burning, and there will be nothing left for Otabek to bury. Nothing to save; and only a wicked pain in his heart.

Otabek sinks to his knees, watching the fire rage, consuming everything—but he doesn't get up, he doesn't move, and five days later, when the fire finally stops burning, Otabek is staggering down the road, a blackened and unrecognizable hulk of a man, who tried and failed to follow his lover into a place he's not allowed to go.

He's tried more than once to unlock the puzzle of death, to follow Yuri into the great beyond, but it's never worked—and Otabek knows, his heart heavy and still burning with the flames of Rome's great fire, that it never will.

++

This time, Otabek gets an entire lifetime with his Yura. He gets fifty years, and even as Otabek fails to age, even as Yura's hands begin to tremble and his hair shades from blond to grey, even as his eyes become rheumy he's still beautiful, the fey creature that Otabek has loved all his long life.

This time, Yura lives. His bright burning-candle life is long and adventurous. He travels to Paris, even though the city is a cesspool. He goes to Italy. He gallivants around the world with Otabek at his side; first introducing him as his 'uncle,' then his 'best friend,' then in Connecticut in 2008 as his _husband_ as they are allowed to marry for the first time; and finally his grandson in Morocco in 2070. Otabek has never been so thrilled or so amused as he kissed those lips. Tasted the salt-sweet of his Yura, still potent after millennia. He kissed those lips and they laughed together at the idea of Otabek being the young man in such an older man's life. Otabek is so happy. He knows that Yuri will leave the earth again soon, but he doesn't have to worry. Times are changing—people are more tolerant.

And when Yuri finally accedes to old age, his Otabek is by his side, wiping his forehead of the sweat that gathers from the sweltering August afternoon. He shuts his eyes, and breathes,

"Beka, I love you—" as his hands grip tight to Otabek's shirt. Then they loosen, and Yura is gone again, a fleeting flicker of candlelight in the course of time.

But it won't be the last time. It will _never_ be the last time.

end.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me (helm-puppet-trash) on [Tumblr](http://helm-puppet-trash.tumblr.com)!


End file.
